There has been a growing issue when it comes to car accidents in Hamden over the past few years. A couple of roads in town are the leading causes of accidents. The number of accidents in Hamden has increased every year since 2020, and there have been over 6,000 car accidents in Hamden from the start of 2020 to the beginning of 2023, according to the UConn crash data repository.
The increase in car accidents over the past few years in Hamden can be attributed to a few different things. There are specific roadways and times of the year in which accidents are higher than at other times. Accidents in Hamden are on the rise and although there has been a push to make structural changes and implement traffic calming measures on specific roads, no changes have been made. The two roads that are the culprits of the most accidents are the busiest roads in Hamden: Whitney and Dixwell Avenues.
Local auto body shops in Hamden are seeing an increase in work due to the high volume of crashes. Douglas Theroux, owner of Theroux & Co. auto body on Rossotto Drive attributes the increased accident rate to one main thing.
“Judging from my volume of work at this point, I would say there has been an increase in accidents and this can be attributed to the growing population in Hamden, obviously there’s a great deal of new development in town, and along with that comes an increased number of cars and traffic,” Theroux said.
Accidents increasing in Hamden
According to accident logs provided by Christina Colavaiacovo of the Hamden Police Department Records Division, in the past 12 months, there have been 289 accidents where the Hamden Police Department has been called to Whitney Avenue. According to the accident logs on Dixwell Avenue, there have been 476 accidents where the Hamden Police Department was called within the past 12 months. The two roads accounted for 765 accidents from November of 2022 to November of 2023 which is over two accidents per day.
Theroux has witnessed quite a few accidents on Whitney and Dixwell avenues in the decades that he has been in business.
“I’ve been in business for a very long time and over the years there’s probably been hundreds of cars that have come in from accidents on Whitney and Dixwell. I happen to have two cars in the shop right now that were involved in an accident at the Whitney and Dixwell Avenue intersection” Theroux said.
Across Whitney Avenue, there have been a lot of major accidents in the past few months alone that have been documented by Quinnipiac Barstool on social media.
The time of year that these accidents happen more frequently is no coincidence. Accidents across Hamden and specifically on the two main roads tend to spike when classes are in session at Quinnipiac University.
Data
According to the UConn crash data repository, there have been 1,095 total accidents in Hamden from Jan. 1st, 2023, to Oct.31st, 2023. Among those 1,095 crashes, the total number of vehicles involved was 2,105 and the total number of people involved in all the accidents was 2,772.
The high number of accidents in Hamden can be looked at through the lens of Whitney and Dixwell avenues. The two roads are the leading roads for accidents in the town and the other roads in Hamden do not come close to having as many accidents as Whitney and Dixwell.
“On Whitney Avenue I have seen a lot of violations over the years, speeding in particular near Spring Glen which is a school zone, drivers will pass on the right side going 50 miles per hour,” Theroux said.
From year to year in Hamden, most accidents tend to come from January through May. This period of time is when roads and slick due to ice and snow. Additionally, within this time frame is when Quinnipiac students are in Hamden. Specifically, in April of 2023, there were 136 accidents in Hamden and in May there were 163 accidents. April and May are two months when classes are in session at Quinnipiac. However, when students finish the semester and go elsewhere for the summer the accident numbers decline significantly. In June 2023, there were 54 accidents across Hamden and 38 in July. It is clear that the attendance of Quinnipiac University students has a drastic impact on the overall number of accidents in the town.
“The only thing that might contribute in terms of Quinnipiac students would be just by the number of students and cars on the road, it does increase the traffic to some degree and that is noticeable and of course when you get more people, you’re going to get more bad drivers,” Theroux said.
Accidents compared to other Connecticut towns
The accidents in Hamden do not mean much without context and perspective. In Bristol, Connecticut, which has approximately the same number of residents as Hamden (60,000) there have been fewer accidents in recent years. In 2022 in Bristol, there were 1,453 accidents, whereas Hamden had 1,903 accidents. To start this year Hamden has already seen about 200 more crashes compared to Bristol. That number is only set to rise because it is only through October and it is clear that Hamden experiences fewer accidents in the summer months because Quinnipiac University is not in session. Hamden continues to lead the way in the number of accidents when compared with other towns of similar size in Connecticut.
Over the past few years, many potential solutions have been discussed to try and limit accidents in Hamden. There have been ideas and proposals for road diets on Whitney and Dixwell avenues, but no changes have been made regarding the structure of the roads. The current Hamden Mayor, Lauren Garett, recently talked about the difference road diets can make on both of these roads.
“We have a bill in front of the state legislature hopefully coming up to address road diets on Whitney and Dixwell avenues and that’s a great way to reduce accidents,” Garrett said.
This bill has since caused the town and the Connecticut Department of Transit to run studies looking at the roads to try and come up with the best potential solutions for increasing safety.
Potential solutions for Whitney and Dixwell avenues
A road diet is a structural change to a roadway that aims to make the road safer. There have been talks about creating a road diet on Whitney Avenue for about four years. A road diet on Whitney Avenue would mean that the road would no longer have two lanes on both sides. Instead, there would be only one lane on each side with a middle turn-only lane for both sides. The road diet would be an important change to one of the busiest roads within Hamden. The road diet would require state funding to make it happen.
Whitney Avenue is not the only roadway in Hamden for which traffic calming measures have been proposed.
Dixwell Avenue has also been home to a lot of accidents and that has caused CTDOT to look into implementing a road diet. The potential road diet on Dixwell Avenue would be implemented from Evergreen Avenue to Shepard Avenue along Dixwell.
The idea of a road diet on Dixwell dates back to 2017 but currently, in 2023 no structural changes have been made. Stephen White, the Hamden Town engineer, is constantly looking at traffic patterns on Whitney and Dixwell avenues and looking for ways to improve safety.
“Anecdotally I can say that Dixwell, Whitney, and State Street are the top three roadways for traffic accidents,” White said. “The roadways are state roads. Making changes to state roads can get cloudy. The Town has and is currently engaging with CTDOT to push for improvements that will help make the roadways safer for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorized vehicles.”
Since Whitney and Dixwell are roads that are owned by the state it makes it difficult for the town of Hamden to make changes. One thing that the town of Hamden has done is that they have conducted studies to show traffic patterns and look at all parts of the road. The town of Hamden used a group called SCRCOG (South Central Regional Council Of Governments) to complete these studies. James Rode, principal transportation officer at SCRCOG, explained how his group does a lot of studies on these two roads.
“We completed two studies for Hamden last year, and there was an intersection study for Dixwell and Whitney Avenue and a complete streets study for Dixwell Avenue as well,” Rode said.
The town of Hamden and CTDOT study looked at the traffic and accident patterns on both Whitney and Dixwell Avenue for the year 2022. Balazs Szokes, transportation supervising engineer at CTDOT, discussed the purpose of the study.
“The object of the study was to check for feasibility of road diets in the first place on state roads within the entire state,” Szokes said.
The studies are just the first steps to being able to make physical changes to the structures of the roads.
“It will be several years until a potential implementation, typically when there is an upcoming re-paving project along Whitney Avenue, as the revised pavement markings can be installed on the fresh pavement after construction,” Szokes said. “Before this occurs, additional discussions would typically be held, and residents would be involved in the Public Information Meeting process.”
Although the studies have been completed, the Town of Hamden is at a standstill until state funding is given and the CTDOT decides to make structural changes to the roads. Given the high volume of accidents along the two roads, the mayor and people in charge in Hamden are continually pushing to speed up the process.
What has the town of Hamden done thus far?
In 2023 the town of Hamden implemented something called the complete street policy. The complete street policy tries to make the streets of Hamden safer by analyzing different traffic calming requests by citizens and seeing what traffic calming measures can be implemented. Different traffic calming measures that could be implemented are anything from medians to speed humps to lane shifts. The complete street policy is something that has been put into place across Connecticut by the CTDOT in order to help increase pedestrian and bicyclist safety. Although the complete street policy aims to make the roadways safer there probably won’t be a decrease in accidents on Whitney and Dixwell until structural changes are made.
Why does it matter?
Aside from the sheer number of accidents across Hamden, these two roads have caused some of the most serious accidents in Hamden. On Sep.16, a serious car accident shut down Whitney for several hours. A couple of weeks later on Oct. 6, another crash shut down Whitney Avenue for a portion of time near Route 15. In the first accident, the driver crashed into a telephone pole and the second one was a two-car crash that sent one car into a telephone pole.
Dixwell Avenue is no better when it comes to serious car accidents. In March of 2023, a pedestrian was struck and killed on Dixwell Avenue which shut down the road for about 12 hours. Another serious crash on Dixwell took place in July of 2023, the accident was a two-vehicle crash where two people sustained serious injuries. The amount of serious car crashes along these two roads is cause for concern for a lot of residents as almost every time there seems to be an accident on one of these two roads it tends to shut down the road and leave at least one of the drivers with significant injuries.
The two roads in Hamden are not new issues but they are not improving, and it has been an issue for many years. There are monthly traffic authority meetings that are held by the town to address different concerns regarding traffic within Hamden. Within these meetings, both Whitney and Dixwell avenues are roads that are constantly talked about because of the number of accidents on the two roads. Until the CTDOT decides to implement changes on Whitney and Dixwell the problem will likely not be solved, and the town of Hamden’s high number of accidents likely will not diminish as well.